BlackBriar
by Anni Re
Summary: Everyone knows that Erik loves Christine. But what if there was somebody who loved Erik, before Erik even met Christine. Rated M for safety and future chapters. Enjoy my fellow phans and REVIEW!
1. At The End Of The Day

Hey everyone welcome to the story. Feel free to review with questions comments and concerns.

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Black-Briar Rose

By

Anni Re

Chapter One: At The End Of The Day

It seemed that all of Budapest had been drawn to the fires and flags of the traveling fair set in the piazza. A girl about thirteen years old watched from behind one of the many tents as the men, women, and children, entered with wide and wondering eyes the secret world inside their own. A world dominated by magicians, acrobats, and freaks. She smiled at them. She loved to watch their faces as they first beheld the fair in the fading twilight leading to a night they might never forget, the curiosity, the excitement, the fear. She tuned and disappeared into her dressing rooms to prepare for their guests.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," cried out a deep voice in front of the curtain that she hid behind. She breathed deeply, always afraid at this point of the evening, knowing the consequences from her managers if she did not entertain the audience, "may I present to you, one of our star attractions, an exotic beauty stolen from the very harem of the sultan of Persia." She chuckled to herself, her history changed with each city. She recalled in particular one story where she was claimed to be an immortal fairy from the forests of Germany who gave up her immortality for the sole purpose of pleasuring men. She frowned, that story was partially true; she was here with one purpose.

"Put your hands together," she snapped her attention back to the voice, "for the empress of erotica, the diva of dancers, Black-Briar Rose." The man who introduced her threw down a fistful of powder, which emitted a flash of light, smoke and sound. In the cloud the man left the stage and she ran to take his place so that when the smoke cleared it would look like the first had transformed into the other. The entire well-rehearsed transition took seconds.

Before the smoke even cleared she leapt threw it creating a gasp from her audience and began to dance. The firelight made her raven hair flash, as well as her eyes as she adopted a seductive look to her face.

The music guided her hips, the bells attached to the jingled as she rocked them. She raised her bracelet adorned arms above her hair, interwoven with gold and rubies and tied back with a ribbon of black silk, and crossed her wrists above her head, clicking the small cymbals attached to her red painted fingers. This action pulled up her already short shirt, revealing her navel and a large and brilliantly red rose that held up her shawl like skirt that came down to the middle of her calves.

The music rose in speed and heat and Black-Briar moved her body faster, more sensually. She stared into the eyes of those who watched her some alight with delight, some drugged with the fumes of the fortune teller's tent they had previously been to, and others who eyed her with a hunger like gleam in their eyes. She decided to pick one of the delighted ones this night, not having the strength to deal with the grabbing and groping of the others and she spun closer to the crowd. Hands reached out to touch her skin as she rushed by her seeking her intended, some were gentle, most were rough.

She spotted her prey in a youth of about twenty who had not taken his eyes off her the entire time she spun around closer and closer. She read his eyes and liked the kindness in them. She stopped her dance suddenly and made a beeline to him, the anklets on her bare feet shaking. She stopped barely an inch in front of him enjoying passively his thunderstruck face. She waltzed around him, pressing her slightly sweaty body to him. When she was behind him she pulled the ribbon out of her hair carefully so that the loop was preserved. She then sprinted out from behind her, dark air flying and then jumped up turning around in the air. In the air she pulled out the rose dropping the shawl reveling an even shorter skirt that ended in the middle of her thighs. She tossed the rose into the air and then slipped the ribbon onto the stem, catching the flower when she tightened the black material. She then as she landed threw it at the man's feet.

The music went into a frenzy and so did Black-Briar doing back flips and cartwheels all over the flag-stoned street that was her stage. She ended her performance with some splits. There was silence in the audience before a second stunned before they began to applaud enthusiastically. The announcer once again came out onto the stage and pulled her off the ground acknowledging her.

The crowds of the fair soon dispersed and the gypsies and outlaws locked their costumes away removed their makeup and went to their sleeping quarters for the night. Only one person remained moving through the now ghost town of multicolored canvases. Black-Briar flitted her way to the back of the fair to the only dark colored tent in the whole entourage. She briefly looked up at the herald painted in bloody red paint before she disappeared into the folds of darkness. The Devil's Child.

Lamplight illuminated the cage and the eight year old curled up in the center of it. She winced at the new marks that stripped his back. His small body quivered his back hair all askew, the crude cloth mask bunched up in the corner as if he no longer bothered to put it on only to have it ripped off again in front of another onslaught of jeering…flawless faces.

She approached the heavy metal bars and reached through straining barely grazing her hand across the top of his head.

He jumped back with a hiss, his disfigured face even more twisted into a snarl. Black-Briar didn't flinch; she merely pulled her hand back.

The snarl left the child's face and suddenly he whimpered longing for her. Black-Briar stepped up onto the wooden floor of the cage, flattened her body, and slipped through the bars to get to the child who was now crying pitiful, dirty tears.

She knelt down and gathered the skeletal boy into her arms and leaned against the bars, rocking him. "There now, little angel," she shushed him, "it's over for the night. No one else is coming." She used the tip of her finger and pulled his head up. She pulled out the cymbals she used for her act and clicked them in front of his face.

The boy let out a watery chuckle and reached out pressing her fingers together himself to create the sound.

Back-Briar looked at the child with excited eyes. "We're leaving tomorrow, little one, to Istanbul. We get a few days off, new places, new faces."

The child sighed and Black-Briar sighed too both conversing silently with each other. Black-Briar settled the child into her body. "Everything will be alright, just sleep now."

The boy turned his disfigured face into the crook of the neck of the only person that ever reached out to him and closed his eyes.

"Rosie…"

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So that's the first chapter vague I know but it's supposed to be that way don't want to spoil you too much. Reviews will be loved.


	2. The Sounds Of Silence

Chapter Two: The Sounds Of Silence

Erik loved the silence. He once believed he loved the quiet where he only heard the distant rumble of props moving on stage and the whisper of tenor voices belting at full volume in his caverns below. But no, he loved the silence so much more. Silence meant he was safe; that, finally, they had stopped hunting him in the charred remains of his glorified prison. Only when there was complete and utter silence did he step from the shadows.

Erik sloshed through the shallow water that lapped at the dark shores of his house by the lake, the frigid temperature chilling his feet. His fine attire had been ruined, his suit-coat long since stripped away, his crisp, white shirt stained with the crimson of cuts and the shadows of purple bruises. The soles of his dark shoes had thinned and the cuffs of his dress pants were in tatters. His cravat was removed was removed from his sweat and grim covered neck only to be used as a cover for the distorted side of his face.

Through the one eye that was not covered by the silk, he looked wearily at the gapping hole that was the splintered remains of his front door forced open by the fists and the crowbars of the genardes. He stepped through the door, his feet treading across the fine woodwork of the door lying on the floor. His hazel eyes flecked with gold looked around the carnage in the main room. Much of his furniture was overturned or destroyed all together, and many things were smashed against the walls. The large Persian rug that spanned the length of the room hand the footprints of his uninvited guests ground into the fabric. He observed all of this with only his lips turning down ever so slightly. He did not mind that much however though, for the thieves did not reach the innermost sanctum within his sanctuary.

Erik walked diagonally towards the left wall stepping over an overturned bookcase as he did. He paused and looked down at what was scattered at his feet, the red ink that leered up at him caused his lips to turn down even more than the rest of the room as a whole. It would not have vexed him in the slightest if the intruders had destroyed his magnum opus, his Don Juan Triumphant. He would gladly have seen it sent to the fires of hell that it so mournfully portrayed within its pages without turning a hair.

Erik walked on, not daring to look at the floor again until he reached the wall that seemed to have no door. He chuckled slightly at the cleverness of himself and leaned slightly to his right, up against a wooden panel and the secret door sprang from its invisibility. Erik stepped into the room that the door yielded to him and a cold formality crossed over his entire being, professional reverence towards his goddess. The massive bronze and rosewood pipe organ dominated the wall before his eyes in the same way that music dominated most of his heart whenever he was in his room, the ebony and ivory blending in the false light in a silent harmony waiting for their masters lithe fingers to tease life out of them. He walked towards it the tips of his gloveless fingers touching the bright red satin that lined the black coffin that served as his bed. He paused and leaned towards his pressing his entire hand onto the wood. He turned and looked into the box. Lying inside it, like a cream colored beacon of hope, and simultaneously the shackle of his rejection, was one of his masks. He sighed, both in relief and resignation, and reached in and picked up the mask delicately with the tips of his fingers. With one hand he held the mask and with the other he undid the knot that held his scarf to his face and let it flutter to the floor. Then, with both hands he slipped on the mask, and the order of his life was set once more.

Erik breathing easier now that he had his form of security placed upon his he continued to move towards his neglected passion, only to stop after a few inches. His eyes widened and his chest constricted as a fear gripped him. Something, something very important to him, had not been placed inside the safe that was this room, but rather out there, at the mercy of those savages. He spun on his heel and returned to the main room and proceeded to systematically tear it apart, perhaps more ruthlessly than his hunters had done. Finally after working his way along the back wall to the right he had last found it, hidden by the cushions of his divan and a set of silver candlesticks. Tenderly, as if he were holding a newborn, he picked up that which he treasured as much as anything he held dear in the world. With the tips of his finger he brushed away some dust that had collected on the head of the monkey that sat on the barrel organ music box, as he drew it back, his finger traced the shell of one of the tiny cymbals that he it held in its hands.

With his treasure clutched into his chest he looked up to see where he was in the room, what room he was in front of. The Louis-Philippe Room, her room. It would always bear the title of her room. Quickly he averted his gaze lest old wounds become salted with a fresh wave of tears and strode away from the hidden door towards the darker side of his world, the place where the only things he was ever allowed to have dwelled. Smoothly, in reigned grief, he once again went inside his own room. He placed the music box inside the coffin in the exact place his mask had been. He went over to the armoire and removed fresh clothes shedding his soiled ones in the process. He also removed his mask so that it would not get caught in his redressing.

For a moment he stood without a stitch of clothing on himself and he examined his body. He looked at the scrapes and bruises he had collected in the past weeks, but he looked beyond them. He looked at his pale, flawless skin, the muscles rolling like waves underneath it. With the tips of his fingers he traced the skin on his legs, his thighs, wrapping around, his palms rising and falling with the ridges of his abdomen up to his chest. Each hand caressed the biceps in the opposite arms before they stroked his broad shoulders. From the back of his neck forward, he ran his hands through his healthy raven hair and then down his face. He stopped abruptly where the symmetry ended, where man's pity was lost. The left hand still touched with his nails the smooth velvet, while the right hand extended to cover the angry scars.

Erik sighed and dropped both hands and redressed, becoming the Phantom of the Opera once more. Yes, his music was waiting for him, calling for him like a lost lover. Yes, he liked his Opera House silent; he could play louder. Ten fingers pounded against the kaleidoscope of emotions and simultaneously the pipe organ drained them from the player until he rested his hands on the keys utterly spent after hours venting silently to the only one that would listen, his own ear. He leaned back, his knees clamping down on the edge of the bench, and put his hands behind his head in contentment relishing the quiet.

Quiet…

Erik's eyes snapped open and he looked with malice at the dark ceiling above it, and the very light tapping of footsteps echoing like the afterthought of a whisper. They were soft, soft he almost missed them, but they rang out particularly because that was the only thing that could be heard. The person must be alone, but still unwanted. He almost laughed to himself at the irony of the situation before standing up and walking out one of the secret entrances from his domain out into his world beyond.

The sound was coming from the stage he figured out as he weaved trough the labyrinths like a shadow. He went to the hollowed out column that resided in Box Five and pushed it open stepping into it. Hidden in the velveteen shadows he looked out onto the remnants of the stage. Parts of it were blacked with soot and there were beams that seemed like they were about to fall in on themselves but the stage was not what drew his attention but rather what was on the stage. A girl, no not a girl, a young woman stood on the stage, her clothes were colorful rags and her hair hung loose about her face, and she was dancing.

Erik watched her, curious and amused. She danced, but it was no dance he recalled seeing before. The style was foreign, unsophisticated but pleasing to the eye, or his eye at least. The girl herself also had an air of other lands about her. It was an air he believed to have breathed before but he could not place where. He watched her some more, cocking his head to one side, trying to place her in a vague part of his memory as she twirled about on the stage with this strange bohemian aura.

Bohemian. The sudden knowledge hit him violently and so suddenly that he had to repress a carnal snarl that was directed to the girl now. No, not girl, not young woman either, gypsy. There was a gypsy in his Opera House. Thousand of painful memories suddenly swelled into his brain, attempting to drown him with anger and pain, all the while the gypsy danced unaware of her sudden peril.

"Why are you here?" Erik hissed. He threw his voice so that it slithered up her spine into her ear. The gypsy stopped moving with a jerk, her hand snapping up to her ear. "Why are you here?" Erik whispered again.

The gypsy quickly got off the stage, her eyes roaming around the skeleton if the house and proceeded towards the exit increasing he pace every time a voice whispered into her ear "Why are you here?"

Erik pursued her, an irrational fear gripping his heart that somehow after all these years his childhood captors were coming for him again. So he followed her, soon ahead of her in the rafters so that when she came out of the main doors he leapt lithely down from from the arch above the door and blocked her way. "Why are you here?"

The girl skidded to a stop, but the look of cautionary fear slowly melted from her face. A new expression came to it, an expression he could not place. But more importantly, that expression made her lose fear of him. "Why are you here?" she shot back.

Erik reeled silently from the question, not expecting this response. "What is it to you why I am here?"

"The same reason it seems for myself why I am here," she answered.

Erik didn't know how to respond to that.

"I am living here," she continued.

That got his attention. "What?"

"I live here," she said again, "I just got into Paris this morning and no one was using those stables so I moved into them for the time being."

Erik sifted around in his head for a response. Taking his silence as a dismissal the woman side stepped him and continued down the street. After a beat Erik followed her. He didn't have to worry about being seen. The Opera Populaire was the gem of the crown that was the street, without the gem, the crown was forgotten.

Erik moved in front of her again and blocked her path.

"If you do not mind," said the woman, a twinge of exasperation in her voice, "I have horse to bed."

"I do not allow just anyone to live in my home."

"Your home?" The woman looked over his shoulder at the run down opera and flicked her eyes back to Erik and looked at him skeptically.

Erik's face remained stone.

She huffed, "May I please stay in your home."

"No." Erik turned to leave thinking that was the end of the matter.

She started laughing. "Stop. Stop," she said. He turned to look at her. "What is your name?"

"I have no name," said Erik bluntly.

"Really now," said the woman slowly moving t her right, he move with her staying on the opposite end of the circle. "Really now, that's a shame. Well, I guess I don't have a name either. Suddenly she leaned against the door of the stable, a smirk on her face. Erik realized what she did. She turned them while she was talking so that she had subtly gotten past him and to the stables. Clever, clever yet unnerving.

Singed slightly he moved towards her. Her smile broadened and leaned into the stables. "Good day," she said pleasantly as if they were ending a casual stroll at her home, and she slammed the door in his stunned face.

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Sorry this took so long--I swear it will be faster now I--thanks for your waiting--it is much respected


	3. Of Dreams And Thunderstorms

Chapter Three: Of Dreams And Thunderstorms

Erik sat on the bench lay in front of his pipe organ, playing brokenly with one hand, not really paying attention to what came out of the instrument, his mind lost in a torrent of thoughts. Erik had observed her in his phantom like way in the rafters of her makeshift home many times over the course of the days that she had been there. During the days she was gone, her horse too, and everyday he slowly convinced himself that this time she had left for good. But every night, well into the evening when he looked into the stable for the final time of the day before he went to sleep himself, she was always there sleeping in the hay.

He watched her the first night she had slept here. Watched how she curled into a tight ball for warmth as her beast stood over her in his own slumber. Her raven hair flowered in small waved down her back, covering her shoulders. They would be as pale as new cream he figured in the sun had not ridden her day after day and darkened her skin. He paused in his observation and looked at his hand. Slowly he slipped his tight fitting glove from his hand and looked at the skin underneath, the pale waxy skin that stretched over his long bones. He flexed his fingers, watching his skin ripple in the fading moonlight and wondered if he too would bronze if he were allowed by humanity into the light of day. He sighed loudly and shoved his hand back into its casing.

His movements however, soft they were, were painfully loud in the night and it startled his visitor awake. Sharply she sat up, tightening into herself even more and her head flew around the room, her eyes seeking whatever had awakened her. Erik drew back even more into the shadows casting down his eyes lest their golden light drawing unwanted attention to him. But through his peripheral vision he watched her even more carefully. She watched the soft and graceful movements of her dancer's body, how she licked her pale, full lips with the tip of her tongue, how her dark eyes, widened with uncertainty, scanned the room.

Her eyes, oh, her eyes. His body shuddered with a dormant pain deep in his chest, twisting his heart. Her eyes so beautiful shaped, so tastefully tinted, so stunningly tipped with long dark eyelashes, so achingly like Christine's.

Christine…_Christine._

The organ wined in protest as he pressed down a sour combination of keys, causing Erik to jerk out of his thoughts and away from the organ. He hissed slightly and smacked the wood paneling in front of him level to his waist as if it were the instruments fault. The girl's presence was not kind to his mental health, and the memories that were the cause of this illness.

He pushed the bench away from the organ and rose from it, smoothly leaving the room, music at the moment not able to comfort him. He walked into the main room, still in shatters from the violent siege upon his home. Yet he had no desire to repair it, what was the point. A shattered man living in a shattered house seemed appropriate. Why strain himself to keep up the illusions of grandeur, wealth, power, and happiness when he was dying inside. He shuffled around the room until he found what he was looking for. What he was looking for lay in a small wooden cabinet with a glass window on the front. Gingerly he opened it, mindful of the cabinet's questionable stability since the raid, and pulled out a decanter with one hand and a tumbler in the other.

He went to a divan and leaned languidly against its only side and balanced the tumbler on his palm, his finger removing the stopper of the decanter. The sweet smell of wine invaded his senses, caressing his tormented mind with the promise of soothing relief. No. He snapped the stopper into the neck of the bottle. He didn't want to be soothed with the soft caresses of an aristocratic wine flowing down his throat. He needed it hard; mind numbing. Cognac. He traded decanters and roughly sat down on the divan again pulling the stopper as he went. He took his tumbler and sloshed a generous amount of the liquid into it. He tossed back his head and emptied the tumbler into his throat. He gasped at the sensation poring into his stomach. It burned. Excellent. One thing they have in common. He abandoned the tumbler and pressed the decanter to his lips…

He dreamed. Through the haze of the violent alcohol he dreamed. He dreamed of his diva, his muse, his love. He dreamed that she dreamed in the hidden room across from him, drawn once again to his domain by the guiding power of his voice pervading her soul. No. She was not drawn; she came, of her own free will she came, for the simple yet unfathomable reason of just wanting to be with him. No, not unfathomable. Perfectly normal of a person in love with him. He floated through the surreal setting around him that was his home, restored to its brilliant and paranormal glory, walking slowly towards the door. He stopped in front of the door and leaned against the walls that divided them. For the longest time he just listened the rhythmic sound of her soft breathing, the rustle of the sheets being turned as she moved her in sleep. He was not aware of when he made the motion but he opened the door. She lay starched out on the bed, her face relaxed with sleep, her lips slightly parted as she breathed through her mouth. He hand rested on her breast, her fingers curled as if she was enticing him to come.

Erik shed is shirt and boots and tossed them over to a chair in the corner and padded barefoot across the stone floor draped with oriental rugs. His eyes roamed the curves of her body covered with her nightshift. He looked at how she slept and noticed that she did not sleep in the center of the bed but off to the side as if she had left a spot for him. Erik did not hesitate, but cautiously slid into the bed next to her, so careful not to disturb her. He had never lain with a woman before and the feel of her creamy legs interlocking with his jolted his senses. The weight of her body caused her to shift into his chest. She moaned a little as she woke, Erik watching her eyelashes flutter up and down. Erik watched the corners of her lips turn up into a small smile as she nestled into his chest her hand moving from her breast to his chest, the tip of hr nail lightly tracing a circle around his pectoral. He groaned a little, a dull thud sounding as his head fell back against the headboard. He sighed and laced his fingers into the locks at the base of her skull. He felt the muscles in her neck move under his hand as she turned her head up to him. He looked down into her eyes.

"Erik," she whispered.

The dream changed again. The eyes did not but everything else did. "I have to go now," said a different voice coming form a different face, yet seemingly carrying on the conversation Christine left off.

"Don't go," he murmured, his hand tightening around her. Strange, his voice seemed higher, younger, his hands smaller.

But she left again for her duties in the night, reluctantly yet forcibly removing herself from his grip and slipping through the bars, leaving the child in his cage again. He waited, his heart almost beating out of his frail chest, tucking his body into himself, determined to keep focused on the floor, tears hidden by the burlap sack streaming down his face. He heard the thud of boots and the deep voice of his master beckoning his patrons forward to have their eyes defiled by the sight of his freak. He let out a whimper as he grabbled the bag and some of his filthy hair in the process, both being violently ripped from his head as his head snapped back, face contorted in pain.

He heard the curses of many languages and the universal sound of screaming. He opened his eyes and saw the first hoard of the evening, their faces either riveted to his or twisted away from the sight of it. The crowd grew until it became all who had ever looked on him while he was trapped in the fair. He heard drums and whistles and tambourines in the distance. He turned his head and the audience seemed to be swallowed by the darkness as he forgot about them and stared in awe at the dancing girl in the light of an unseen fire with cymbal on her fingers and roses in her hair.

The beat of drums turned into the crash of thunder and Erik awoke from his dream, his alcohol smelling breath heaving in and out if his chest coated with a thin film of sweat. He blinked his eyes many times so they could focus on his darkened surroundings for his head ached from his numbed mind needing to function again. He cocked his head to the side and focused his hearing and heard the thunder above his ceiling and inner mixed with the low rumblings of the clouds he heard the high pitched whinny of a terrified horse and the voice of a certain woman trying to calm it. The thunder cracked again and the animal screamed louder. He looked calculatingly at the ceiling, weighing things in his mind. Finally with another clap and cry he huffed and began to quickly move about the room…

Erik trudged through the brackish water that flooded the stables from the holes in the shingles above. With every clap of lightening he could see them as he got closer and closer to them. A beautiful animal with chestnut colored hair drenched with water struggled in the chaos of his surroundings and his own fear while his master clung to his reins ankle deep in water and soaking wet herself to keep him from bolting out into the empty streets. Another flash of light caused the animal to rear, its hooves flashing in the light as the woman still hung on and dodged the deadly feet. It was dark for a few seconds before the lighting struck again. The woman gasped and let go of the reins when she saw him clutching the reins as well, materializing out of nowhere in the few seconds. Erik controlled the beast far better than she did, barely allowing him to move in his firm grip. She looked at him, and he returned it for one long moment before in unison they moved towards his secret door back into the cellars, the woman taking refuge under his cloak, and he towing along her horse.

They walked in silence, with only the steady dripping from their clothes and the smack of their shoes against the stone to fill the void. Erik bedded her horse along with his own and then walked to the other side of the passageway and pressed seemingly nothing at all to release the spring to open one of the many doors into his main room. The girl walked in, her mouth hanging open slightly at the sight of the shambled elegance, but Erik didn't give her much time to absorb it because his head was pulsating with every step and his eyelids were drooping with every second. He walked over to the door on the northeast side and opened it. What used to be _her _room was now her room. "You will stay here," he said quietly.

The woman looked at him and the open door he stood beside and took her silent cue quickly flitting her way through the mess to the room that was given to her. As she passed his to enter the room she nodded her head. "Thank you, monsieur," she said just as quietly.

Erik looked at her back and sighed. "My name is Erik."

The woman paused in her movement towards the bed and slowly turned towards him, her eyes seeming to show that she understood the trust that was laid down before them. "Olivia," she responded.

Erik nodded his head lightly at Olivia before, without another word being spoken, closed to door to her room and silently went to his own.

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I am begging...on bended knee...looking at you through a window with rain pouring down my face with those big unnaturally shiny puppy dog eyes with sad violin music playing in the back ground... REVIEW THIS STORY....PLEEEEEEZE!!! Here I'll start you off "What I think about Black-Briar is....


	4. The Presence Of A Guest

Chapter Four: The Presence Of A Guest

Erik slept a dreamless sleep for many more hours after he had shown Olivia into Christine's room. Erik's eyes opened and he stared at the dark ceiling for a very long time, pondering the decision he had made, the risks he had taken of letting another person, another woman into the underbelly of his domain, wondering if his inebriation had somehow had influence over it. He rolled to his side and pressed his face into the pillow of his new bed. Before he had gone to retrieve Olivia he moved Christine's bed out of her room, reassembled it and brought one of the stage beds down from the prop rooms two floors above. It didn't take too long, but it took long enough for Erik after the fact to question is long debatable sanity. Olivia would have had to have slept in Christine's bed, her scent eclipsing the fading presence of his beloved. He wanted to cherish every last bit of it before she slipped away from him forever. He closed his eyes and inhaled the smell of her skin laced with perfume still trapped deep in the down of the pillow. He screwed his eyes shut to forcibly keep his tears from washing it away.

Erik heard the soft tapping of feet in the room beyond and raised his head from the mattress, a question painted across his countenance. He heaved himself out of the bed and walked over to the door pressing the panel to open it. Olivia was moving across the main room, her clothes no longer mud splattered, her hair not longer disarray but neatly pulled back from her face. Quietly she had set about cleaning and clearing out the things that were damaged by the onslaught of the investigation. His eyes silently swept the room to see glass cleared from the floor furniture righted and their trimmings placed on them. He softly cleared his throat and Olivia turned on her heel to face him. "Good morning," she said simply.

"How did you get out of that room," he asked, not bothering to return the greeting.

Her eyes flickered to the invisible frame and then back to her host. "I have a talent of getting in and out of things which are supposedly inescapable." Erik was not comforted by this statement but hid it well by altering his gaze to look about his newly reconstructed domain. It was very well done. Everything was where he would have put it. The bookshelf was against the back wall with his collection neatly placed in its wooden folds, the red wing backed chair placed to the right of it with the oil lamp behind it. His whiskey cabinet was placed off the in the corner, stealthily hidden in the darkest corner of the room. In the center of the room was the divan and the low table in front of it, the rug that lay underneath it was unwrinkled and glass ridden.

"Does it suit you?" Erik turned and saw that his guest was a few meters behind him, watching as he inspected what she had done while he had slept.

"Yes," he said turning to her. "It suits me fine, thank you."

She nodded her head, a pleased look crossing her face. "It was the least I could do for you taking me in so suddenly."

With the cordials now said they had nothing more to say so they stared at each other in awkward silence each calculating the stance of the other. In that way Erik stared at Olivia who stared at her, her inquisitive brown eyes looking into his hazel ones. Her eyes centered in her full face, which was connected by her elegant neck to her body that was wrapped in Christine's clothes. His heart twisted as he looked at how well she filled the dress that he had only dreamed of Christine wearing. It was the pale peach one, the one she would wear on Sunday strolls in the afternoon when in was sunny. He had conjured countless country escapades with her in that dress. There was a hat to it too, somewhere, and shoes, dainty little shoes for little feet to wear. He looked down; she was barefoot.

"I would like to tend my horse now," said Olivia suddenly and Erik was snapped out of his delusions. He cocked his head to the side a small smirk playing on his lips. "I thought you could find my doors," he said slyly.

Olivia raised her eyebrows, playing along with his cheeky comment, "I could, but I chose not to since you have now awoken, and it would save me so much time and effort it you would just…let me out," she ended delicately.

Erik chuckled underneath his austere façade. Sarcasm, how very unlike Christine, he noted in the back of his mind. "As you wish," he said smoothly turning towards one of the hidden doors and opening it without any effort at all. He turned back to her and saw that she was trying to memorize where it was on the wall. He raised his hand and beckoned towards her. As she passed him and he closed the door to the room with a clang he whispered to her from the darkness. "I may not let you back in," he said.

Olivia did not say anything for a moment and Erik passed in front of her as they walked, soundlessly examining her again. "You will let me back in," she said when he was in front of her after completing his circuit.

He turned back and looked at her, revealing himself to her from the cloak of shadows. "Why is that," he asked.

"Because," she said coolly, raising her head to look at him in the face. "I interest you too much."

Curse his curiosity, and her perception even more.

They walked side by side in silence down the straight and narrow path the Erik's underground stable. They heard a horse cry out at their coming. Olivia's face lifted at the sound. "Hello, my love," she said brightly passing past her escort and quickly approaching the stall where her horse resided in. The animal stretched its neck as far over the door as it could and pressed its face into her chest, Olivia's arms wrapping around its head as she cooed in a soft voice to it.

Erik walked over and leaned against his own horse's stall and silently observed the pair's reunion. He watched how her eyes roamed over the animals healthy coat, how he hands ran over his muscled body and inspected him for injury, how her soft voice seemed to calm hi restless disposition. He felt a thump in the back of his head and his own head bent forward. He looked over his shoulder and saw his stallion staring at him, his own head reaching out to him over the wood that divided them. He heard bell like laughter in front of him.

"Your horse seems jealous," she commented with a smile.

"Jealousy," said Erik running a hand over the horse's nose, "when you are speaking of Caesar can sometimes be translated into impertinence."

"Which is always translated into spirit," Olivia replied. "He is a Morgan is he not?"

Erik nodded, "and yours?"

Olivia turned and looked deep into her animal's idly stroking its mane. "Shakespeare was an English race horse. He got too slow with age so they retired him, and I bought him for a fraction of what he is worth. He's fast enough for me." She looked up at Erik. "But my views and the rest of the world's are two completely different things, don't you agree?"

"I do," said Erik softly, she unknowing how much he agreed.

A few days passed and the pair existed relatively independently of each other, a fact which made Erik very distraught. Olivia had not once asked him for his story, for the reasons which lead him to live in the vaults of a burned down opera house, of why he kept to himself here at the bottom of the world, of why he wore a mask. No, Olivia had not once asked him about his mask, never once tried to remove it. That was more than Christine had ever done for him, and that perhaps was making him more distraught then ever.

He sat thinking of this on the divan while Olivia was sitting cross-legged on the floor looking at something, her small fingers flitting through the loose leafed pages. Every few minutes he heard the ruffled off the dry paper and sound of her breathing. Erik heard Olivia sigh and he turned his head to look at her. "This is very good," she said straightening the pages. He moaned when he was the title triumphantly glare up at him in red ink. "Did you write this?" she asked.

He did not respond; his voice strangled in his throat before speech could be formed. He nodded stiffly instead.

"I thought so," she mused looking interchangeably at the composer and the opera, "it seems so like you," she looked up at him, her dark eyes probing imperceptibly "or what was once you." There was silence.

Then…

"Did you love her?"

The dormant wound became inflamed with pain and fury. Yes, his mind screamed as he stood up and walked to the wall. How could he not, how could any man given the gift of sight not love her with all his being until he was but a husk at the first sight of her. He did, _he _did. His hand on the wall curled up into a tight fist. Olivia watched all of this.

"She broke your heart." It was not a question but a statement.

Erik mind boiled easily with this tender subject. He whipped his head and glared at her as she looked back with understanding. Understanding? How dare she attempt to understand him? How dare she try to do what no one in the world would do, what Christine would do? How dare she try to best his Christine?

He pressed the panel and opened a door. An addict could only stay away from his drug for so long.

"Where are you going?"

"Out," he snarled back at her.

"To get away from me, or to get closer to her?" she shouted back.

"Both," he said and violently closed the door.

He walked blindly but without need of any guidance to the Chateau de Changy. Nimbly he climbed the wall until he reached the balcony of the master bedroom. He leapt to it lightly and then pressed the black mass that was his body to the window. He sighed in content at what he saw. Christine was sleeping peacefully in the way that he always watched her, on her back her head turned to the side, her hand lightly curled next to it. With her hand there she always looked like the child that he had seen on her first night on the opera, crying, afraid of the dark that had become his ally. He had come and lit it with may nightlights to distract her from it, but it did not matter, she was still afraid of the dark, and when the nightlights failed as always ran back to the light.

That was when she saw the large hand that rested on her stomach, the hand of her husband, the husband that was not him. His eyes looked down at the ring that was on his smallest fingers and he kissed the gold band and his fantasized marriage to the Angel of Light. He pressed his forehead to the glass looking at the new ring that adorned her finger. "Christine," he whispered through his teeth.

She awoke with a jolt, like always when he called to her from sleep, but instead of turning from shock to delight, her sleepy face turned from shock to more shock. Slowly she turned her head to face his. "Erik," her lips mouthed.

Another face appeared from behind hers, a face that held nothing but protective fury. A face that had a hand that held a small, silver pistol. He exhaled sharply and turned to his left to seek his escape, his eyes still trained on Christine and the gun.

He heard crack of gunpowder, the shattering of glass. He leapt into the air. He felt searing metal hit his temple the bark of the tree he partially climbed down partially fell from. He felt the impact of the ground, and small hands touch his shoulders.

Then he felt nothing.

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Hello audience meet cliffhanger anyways i am back from new york so expect a lot of new chapters and we are also getting into the meat of the story so stay tuned and REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW please people just a word. please its sorta starting to bum me out have pity on me!


	5. The Healings Of Silver

Chapter Five : The Healings Of Silver

Erik drifted in the interchanging tides of sharp pain knifing his temple and the pleasurable oblivion of painkillers; the pungent pain that was the odor of antiseptics and the pleasurable fluttering of fingertips across his face. Only then did he realize that his eyes were closed, so he opened them.

He was lying in his room, on Christine's bed. It was dark, a deep red light coming from the low-lit candles in the farthest corners of the room. The room was quiet as well, but not quiet as if nobody was in it, quiet as if one was holding their breath. The breath came with one long sigh.

"You have been sleeping a long time," said a soft voice.

Erik's eyes turned away from their previous gaze straight at the ceiling, looking to the right to see Olivia sitting rigidly on the end of a chair leaning towards him. "Can you hear me?" she asked.

Erik nodded slightly then turned his head to see her fully. He hissed through his teeth at the wave of pain from the pressure he inadvertently applied to his injury. He snapped his hand up and felt the thick stiff gauze that bandaged his temple.

Olivia half stood up and leaned over him gently tugging his wrist away from his head with one hand, pressing on his chest with the other so that he would lay down. " Easy, easy," she said gently.

Erik closed his eyes until the ache passed. "What happened?" he demanded.

"You were shot," she replied. "But there was very little damage done." She reached over to the bedside table and picked up something. She brought it over for him to see. The white mask was broken in several places, centering around a deep impression in the upper corner where much of the bullet was still lodged in the hard leather. "It saved your life," she said quietly.

Erik took his curse that had turned blessing and turned it in his hands, his mind pondering the irony. "You followed me," he stated bluntly still running his fingers over the mask.

"Yes," Olivia said much in the same way as she swiftly unwrapped his head and looked at his wound. "It's not that bad anymore," she said, speaking both to herself and to him "just some heavy bruising but I think you will be alright to keep these off." As she brought her hand down a finger touched his cheek in a long stroke. His right cheek. Erik went stiff, his fingers turning to claws around his begrudged protector, as he realized what wasn't on his face.

Erik jerked away from Olivia as if she had given him an electric shock trying to put his mask on his face in the process.

Olivia realized what he was doing and why he was doing it a split second after he started doing it. She leaned over him and firmly tried to draw the mask away from his face. "Erik, stop. It's all right. Please, the mask, it will cut your face again if you put it on." She grabbed his wrist, and for a moment his muscles relaxed. "It's all right," she whispered.

Both sides of Erik's face twisted into gruesome renditions of pain and anger. "No," he hissed through his teeth. "It's not all right. It will never be all right," the pain took over and his angelic voice shook. "It is all one sick merry-go-round, over and over again." The anger of the inner demon reared its head. "No," it growled, "never again. Never ever again." The muscles in his wrist tightened to unbreakable steel bands and resumed pulling.

Erik pulled his mask to his face and almost had it secured when Olivia jerked the piece of hard leather dusted with fragments of metal sideways, which caused Erik to run a sliver of the bullet along his hairline. Erik closed his eyes and winced slightly at the slight pain that came from it.

Olivia's eyes moved from his closed eyes, to his tense hand, to the crimson blood that was seeping from the cut into his midnight hair. "Now look what you made me do," she sighed. Olivia rose from where she was sitting and went to the washstand off in the corner. Gingerly she lifted the basin and the pitcher by its side and carried it back to the bed. She placed the basin on the bed, Erik saw that it had a crisp, white cloth folded in the bottom. Olivia poured the water from the pitcher into the bowl and stirred the cloth around in it with the tip of her finger, the warm, grey wisps of steam billowing around her hand as it moved in steady circles, creating translucent bangles around her wrists. Erik stared at the bangles.

Olivia rung the cloth out and began to move towards him again. Erik's frown deepened and he pressed his head farther back into the pillows away from the hand. He did not need charity; he didn't want it. He didn't want to surrender himself to the hope that she had kindness, that she was different from the rest of the world. Erik smacked her hand away from his injury. Olivia pulled back, sighed, and tried again. Erik smacked her hand again. She pulled back sharply and rubbed her wrist. She looked at him, he looked at her, and their wills clashed like grumbling thunderclouds. Olivia lunged towards him, an intense look on her face. Erik caught her chest in the palm of his massive head and pushed her back so roughly she fell backwards to the foot of the bed. Olivia sat up and furiously balled the cloth in her hand and flung it into his face before she rolled off the bed and stormed to the hidden door. She turned and looked over her shoulder as she hit the panel and looked at Erik who was staring at the cloth, slowly folding it so that he could use it. The smoldering fire in her eyes died when he gently dripped the water on his wound. She sighed and calmly, resignedly, left the room.

Erik silently dabbed the razor thin cut that was seeping blood into his raven hair until the spreading crimson stain finally ceased. He tossed the cloth back into the water and watched it turn a pale red with pondering eyes. He thought of how she had heated the water, and before that dressed his wound, and before that heaved his unconscious form, and before that even…bore to look upon his face without running in fear to leave him to his own devices, again. He thought how her kindness, confusing and frightening though it was, did not warrant such a response.

Erik rose smoothly from Christine's bed his eyes unconsciously shifting back to it to ensure he left no blood stains on the fading presence that was his love. He pressed the panel and the door slid open…to reveal an empty room with the door to the outside to the lake open. Erik tilted his head to one side, once again marveled and was concerned at how well his guest had adapted to his home. He walked towards the door that framed the still lake by the dark wood and stone until it faded into dark oblivion. He walked out onto the narrow granite beach and called for her, his voice echoing in the cavern.

He walked closer to the water and noticed something out of the corner of his eye. It was a dark lump near the edge of the glistening pool. He walked towards it and slowly it defined shape, texture. He knelt down and with stunned realization felt the soft fabric of clothes.

Erik heard the sound of water splashing behind him. He couldn't help it; he turned. Olivia stood, naked, calf deep in the water of his lake, her dark wet hair framing her eyes that stared at him silently with an emotion he couldn't place. His eyes traveled downward, and widened at what they saw. On her neck, in a place that would have been just hidden by her clothes was a long scar stretching horizontally across her neck, as if somebody had held a knife to her throat. He saw on her shoulders, her collarbone, her breasts, crescent shaped marks of teeth varying in age ranging from pale white to very noticeable pink upon her darkened skin. He saw bruises, dark, angry bruises on her hips and thighs, as if someone had violently held her, violently claimed her. Again, and again, and again.

"You think are so alone."

Erik snapped his eyes up to hers and now identified the emotion, anger mixed with grief. "Did you honestly think you were the only one to suffer the back hand of the world?" She huffed out an exasperated breath, slapping her hands on her thighs. "Let me give you a reality check," she said venomously.

Olivia sloshed from the water towards the house, leaving her clothes in Erik's still hand and passed through the door, not closing it, expecting him to follow. And follow he did, his yellow eyes glued to the deep fingernail marks that crisscrossed her back. Olivia hit the panel to Christine's room hard and passed through the door that swiveled open, passing through it, again leaving it open for Erik.

Erik did not enter the room but leaned up against the frame and silently watched Olivia as she wrapped a robe around her body and sat down at the vanity table on the far wall, her back facing him. She picked up a silver brush and ran the snarls out of her hair. She then turned it and looked at the raised design on the back, the tips of her fingers idly running over it. "A silver rose may be perfect," she said to herself stroking the engraving, "and yes a real rose has flaws, malformed petals, hidden thorns, and the shortness of its life in comparison to the beauty of the eternal rose crafted in silver." She took a breath. "But," she continued, " a real rose, however delicate, is soft, fragrant, and beautiful even with its flaws each differing in some way from the other. A silver rose is a carbon copy of the other forever beautiful, but forever like so many others that the beauty of the one becomes lost because it is like all the others." Her eyes snapped up at the mirror and she looked at him in the door. "Would you give up that which makes you who you are, for the purpose of being like everyone else?"

Erik pondered her words and her question. At first he thought yes but then he gave pause to all that he had because of who he is. He thought of his musical talents, a gift unconsciously given to him by the theatre that sheltered him, because of who he was. And he thought of Christine, whom he would have never known if the theatre had not sheltered him, because of who he was.

His music, and his muse, could he give both up to have the face of Christine's lover, and never to her been the Angel of Music.

The answer came quick and resolutely to his mind.

No.

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Hello my readers so so so sorry that this took so long (especially to XSPUDX) but my muse went on vacation when I found my own Erik :)

I promise I will update faster. Thank you for your patience in little me. LUV YOU ALL


	6. Of Children And Fairs

Chapter Six: Of Children And Fairs

But Erik still had a question on his mind. A question that had lingered, hidden in the back of his mind, ever since this woman had placed herself on his doorstep. He walked towards her, his boots barely making a sound against the rugs that lay across the stone floors. Olivia didn't look at him as he approached, looking down at the silver in her hand, a long fingernail idly tracing the rose. But Erik knew she knew that he was coming in closer and closer to her. Knew by the way her breath quickened ever so slightly, by the way her hand tensed around the handle of the brush. He stood a hair's breath behind her, a dark shadow in the mirror Olivia sat in front of. The dark shadow knelt down to the woman, and a pair of lips whispered into her ear. "Who are you, Olivia?"

Olivia let out a breath in one long, low, rush. "I once was as you once were many years ago." Olivia did not look at Erik, but rather past him, into the pages of her past. "I do not remember much of my very early years, but life as I always knew it began in Budapest. They said I was beautiful, and my master was pleased. I got fed when my master was pleased. I passed through Budapest five more times before that final cage was filled, before the boy who became my one and only companion.

Erik sucked in a breath and there it stayed in his lungs, not daring to move.

"We passed through that city many more times together, growing up in the kingdom of shadows and dream. He in that cage, with me slipping into it every night. To share my food with him, to shed my tears with him, to sew hopes into each other's hearts. I stayed with him until dawn, until I had…"

"to dance."

Olivia looked at Erik through the reflective glass. His eyes were wide and his mouth hung open a little as he struggled to speak, as if that hope they had sewn together was finally beginning to sprout. "You had cymbals on your fingers," he whispered, "and flowers in your hair. I watched you in the brief seconds the flaps of my tent were opened, you dancing barefoot on the streets. Black-Briar Rose."

Olivia turned in her seat and looked at him, her dark eyes shining. "you do remember me."

Erik swiftly knelt down and wrapped his only childhood friend in his arms, resting her head on his chest like his had been all those years ago. "How could I ever forget you…Rosie."

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Short chapter I know, but the next chapter will be longer I promise Reviews welcome.


	7. The Discovery Of The Obvious

Hey people sorry this took so long and i acknowledge that this was a VERY long wait and for those who have stuck with this story over this wait BLESS YOU. my poorly contrived excuse is that I had school finals and that crash everyone knows happens after school gets out and you don't want to do anything. It wont happen again because my scatter brain moment is gone and im ready to get this story written. Reviews are loved updates will be more regular now that im out of school. Enjoy!

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Chapter Seven: The Discovery Of The Obvious

Erik and Olivia sat on the divan in the center of the main room in Erik's home, Olivia resting on Erik's shoulder, a glass filled with sweet, dark wine balanced in each of their hands and the reunited friends recapped there years of separation. Erik told her of everything. The world he had created for himself just beneath the noses of the Paris aristocracy, the kindness of Madame Giry and her little girl, the little girl who stretched out her hand to welcome an orphan into her large and diverse family as her closest sister, the orphan he would visit nightly in her dreams as well as his own who would grow up to be Christine Daae. Erik told Olivia about the Viconte and the love triangle that angled itself between the three of them, and the final fall of the opera house, and his love.

Erik had emptied his glass while Olivia had barely sipped at hers; her eyes and thoughts somewhere away form him. He sneaked a glance at her profile resting casually on his upper torso. He thought of the bruises that were hiding underneath the garments that she wore. Smoothly he took a finger and turned her chin towards his face. "What happened after I left?" he asked.

Olivia's face fell as dark memories flashed across her mind. "I grew up. But the more I grew up, the more I wish I was forever a child." She sighed. "Our master saw…business opportunities…in me."

"I killed my master," said Erik harshly.

Olivia shook her head. "You killed your keeper, Erik. But you did no kill his master Erik. The master of us all, and was my keeper." She looked deep into his eyes, as if she was attempting to instill in him the fear she had accumulated in her lifetime. "Claudius Barum, the gypsy baron, the master of us all." Olivia took another breath; Erik heard the shaking in the air as it passed between her lips.

"He hurt you," Erik supplied softly. He ran his hand over her hidden bruises, careful not to touch her body. "He used you."

Olivia nodded. A little after you left, the person I selected each night was allowed to have me, and sometimes, more than sometimes Barum took me after they did." Olivia looked at him. "Apparently beauty is just as profitable a selling point." Erik didn't speak merely nodded.

"What kept you there, bound to such cruelty, for all that time?"

"Fear of what they would do if they ever found me, a fear for what they would do to you if they ever found you, because of me."

Erik blinked, confused.

"I danced to protect you, to save you from the scheming, their plots, as much of their backhand as possible. The reason why they didn't pursue you as hard as they would have was because they were soon occupied with the business had in me.

Erik let out a breath. "You condemned yourself to this life, became their star, their plaything, to protect me.

"Yes," she responded. The word was simple, yet profound. There was a beat of silence before she continued.

"When I was twenty, I had an astounding realization that you were not going to be found. With that fear gone, I slowly began to grow bolder, less compliant. But when I refused by first patron was when Barum decided to…intervene…and he broke me that night. He did not, however, break what he wanted. He cemented the idea that you were clever enough to evade capture, perhaps so was I. I imagined the life you made for yourself, and I wanted one of my own, with you. That night I left the camp to try to find you."

"And what did you do?" Erik asked.

"I did the only thing I could, that I knew how to do to make steady money in order to search Europe to find you. My only fear was that you went to America. They have a policy against admitting…prostitutes." That was the first time she said the word, and she spat it out as if it were toxic. "My only wish was that you hadn't forgotten me. Olivia drifted off into silence, moving her wrist slightly so that her wine swirled around in the crystal. She took a long sip, deliberately swallowing each mouthful.

Erik shifted out from underneath her and stood in front of her, she looking up at him with a question on her face. He extended his hand to her. "I want to show you something," he said.

Olivia took his hand and he smoothly lifted her form the divan and led her over to the hidden panel that his room hid behind. Erik walked her past Christine's bed and towards his massive organ. On the side on the instrument resting on a narrow strip of wooden paneling he reached for an object that was hidden from Olivia by Erik's back. He released her hand so that so that he could pick up what he was hiding from her. "Look," he said quietly, almost tenderly, as if her were holding a beloved child. Resting in Erik's hands was a music box with a lead monkey sitting cross-legged on top wearing beautiful dark red Persian robes. But the thing that she noticed the most were the cymbals the figurine held in its hands. The cymbals that she hand worn of one of her hands that she had amused a lost, lonely boy when she was a child. Gently she reached out and traced the edge of the brass circles with the tips of her nail. "You kept them all these years," she said. She looked up and saw the corners of Erik's mouth turning upward one half disappearing under his mask.

"I never forgot about you, how could I forgot the person that first gave me music…gave me kindness."

Olivia smiled up at him.

Days passed and Erik and Olivia eased into the brother and sister camaraderie that they had when they were children. They talked of their past more and Erik soon began to wade himself into the way he was with Christine, the ever present Angel of Music. Erik played for Olivia; he played the music he toyed with when he was a child first living at the opera house in the realm of his calling. He however stayed away from the longer darker pieces of his man hood drowning in unfulfilled want and desire, the years Christine had live in the opera. That is until that day that Erik was playing upon his instrument and Olivia was sitting at his feet, wide eyed and awestruck in the way that Christine had been, how he always dreamed she would. Erik drifted into the darker pieces lost in his memories as his soul silently bled on the ivory while his fingers crossed and re-crossed the keys, not keeping track of what Olivia was wandering over to.

"Erik," she said.

He stopped playing with a jerk, the melody being strangles as he came back to reality to see Olivia in a corner by a long table touching a rose with a jet black ribbon wrapped around the stem that lay there. "What is this?"

Erik stood and walked over to her and the rose while Olivia continued to talk to him. "I wore a rose like this in my hair when I danced, why did you make this?"

"I made more than that one," said Erik dodging the question. Olivia raised an eyebrow and waited. "It childish, really," he said but she was not to be hindered. "When you danced, I watched you. I saw you throw a rose like this at the feet of men, and when they did they always looked as if they would love you for forever. I made them, because I thought the same would happen when I gave them."

Erik turned his head and struggled to keep his face composed as he thought of how drastically untrue that was. He thought of the hundreds of roses he had given her, his Christine, how he had watched her making sure she found it, and the soft smile of her face when she did making his heart flutter, which now was nothing more than an ache. All those roses, all that hope, all for naught."

"Erik."

Erik looked down and saw Olivia he eyes trained to the door. "I am going up for a bit. I won't be long, I promise." Olivia was already out of his room before he nodded his consent. Slowly he walked out of the room to find the main room was also empty. Erik roughly sat down in a chair by the wall and ran his hands through his hair. He felt sorry for himself to be like this, and he felt sorry for Olivia to live with a person like this. Erik was trapped in the canyon that divided the time before and after Christine was lost to him and he was forever falling deeper and deeper into the blackness. Everywhere he saw memories of her, everywhere he looked, and everything he did somehow his mind could connect to her. This was only eclipsed by his dreams where she was there. Erik sighed leaning his head back, reclining the chair on two legs. He hated being like this with Olivia, he loved her too much.

Erik jerked his head up and the front legs came back to the floor with a slam. Love? His mind had thought love. How was it possible? He unconsciously had put Olivia and love in the same sentence. It seemed so natural his mind argued. He though about that. He thought about how a friendship had grown so easily between them, a friendship that didn't require him to his much of who he was. He though of how Olivia had made the burden of Christine lessen from the all encompassing it used to be. So much he had dubbed thinking of Christine as a burden, again an unconscious act. His mind was in fast forward now as he though of their weeks together how he had carried bits of her through all of his life, and how she had spent her life searching for him.

He believed it. He dared to believe it. He loved Olivia and she loved him. For the first time in months he felt his heart beat again.

Erik heard the door open and he leapt to his feet and walked towards where Olivia was entering the room. He however slowed down when he saw the somber look on her face, and stopped all together when she spoke.

"Erik, I'm leaving."

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Everybody say cliffhanger! Aren't I evil (wicked laugh) So now you know Olivia's back story. What do ya think? People I am giving you a prompt for a review USE IT!!! pretty please.


	8. The Joys Of Damaged Goods

Chapter Eight: The Joys Of Damaged Goods

Erik felt the world slide underneath his shoes. He clung to anything he could to keep from falling into the cavern that opened beneath his feet. "What…?" he managed to rasp out.

"I have to leave Erik, I can't be here anymore." Olivia walked away from Erik towards Christine's room. Erik watched her back and the image changed. He saw Christine in a wedding dress walking away from him towards where Raoul waited in a boat, clutching her ring into his palm. He imagined the pain her endured in her parting, and knowing with chilling certainty that Olivia's parting would hurt unimaginably worse.

No.

As Olivia silently gathered her things within Christine's room a fury gripped him, a possessiveness to keep what little this life had given him no matter what cost. He stormed into the room like an ominous black cloud. Fiercely he wrapped one arm around her hips and the other angled upward around her torso. She gasped slightly as he hissed into her ear. "You will not," his words cut sharp by his tongue and teeth.

Olivia's face fell into impassiveness as she blankly stared out in front of her. "Let me go, Erik," she said bluntly, "you of all people should know how it is like to be held against their will."

The blow was thrown well and Erik softened his grip, slowly turning her so that his face met his. "Why?" he said simply but the harshness in his voice not yet gone.

Olivia shook her head, a small pained smile on her face that was that it was not obvious why. She backed out of his arms leaving her things in a heap on the on the floor and walked towards the door. She paused and looked at a boudoir that on its dustless marble surface held Christine's things, the ones she did not use painfully organized in an almost shrine like way. She hit it, and the memory of Christine that was surrounding her, drowning her.

She turned and looked at Erik. "I saw her," she said bitterly. "I watched her all day." Her voice was shallow meaningless. "She is beautiful. I can see now why you won't let her go." She backed up to the door. "It doesn't matter. Someone like her will always outrank…damaged goods. Olivia looked up at him. "Good-bye."

Erik heard her pass out of the house towards his stables which lead to the opera stables and away from his life forever. The reference to herself not as a person but as an object stung him, stunned him into silence. An insult to her, even by herself roused him to her defense. He followed her blindly like a dog his keen hearing listening to the sounds of her light footsteps against the stone and the heavier clops of her steed.

Olivia reached the opera stables numbly holding Shakespeare's reins as he followed her. She stopped, her legs no longer able to move as she drew the animal close to her pressing her face into its neck and running her hand over its coat attempting to draw some comfort form the motion. Her eyes caught movement in the shadows and she jumped as Erik blossomed from the shadows, his mask the only indicator of where his face was.

"Don't go," he said, much in the same way he did as a child, soft and weak yet full of hope that maybe this time he could sway her.

"I'm not Christine," she said taking a bold brave step towards him full of hope as well.

Erik walked forward so that he was almost against her. "I don't want you to be. If you were you wouldn't be here." Erik kissed her.

Erik heard the small gasp in her breath at his sudden decision but the tenseness left and she settled into the rolling of his jaw that ebbed and flowed like the tide between the moon and the sea. Erik felt his hands rest lightly on her hips. Olivia reached up and wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him into a stall as she deepened her kiss.

But Erik remained gentle, not hesitant but not harsh either, keeping his hands where they were already daring enough to go.

"What is it," asked Olivia pulling al little away from him.

"You were a plaything for men," he whispered, "I do not want to be like all the others."

Olivia looked up at him. She took her hands from his shoulders and cupped his face, tilting it down so that his eyes were locked with hers. "You will be greater than all other men, Erik." Her hands slipped down his neck over his shoulders and down his arms before her hands rested on top of his. "Make love to me." She applied pressure and curled his fingers with her own, cinching some of her dress into his palm.

Erik exhaled a long breath and leaned his face into hers, his forehead touching hers. She tipped up her chin and lightly touched his lips with hers. Her returned it just as lightly. Erik and Olivia looked into each other's eyes, reading their souls in the way only lovers could and they kissed again more deeply, more passionately, all the while Olivia guiding Erik's fingers to take up more of her dress.

Olivia stopped his hands by grabbing his wrists, her dress already reeled up to her hips and she guided his gloveless hands onto her thighs. Erik smiled shyly into her lips as he felt the warm, smooth skin moving under his hands. Uncertainty still clouded his mind and bound his hands. "What must I do?" he whispered, his desire to be greater to her than the hundreds of other men before him straitjacketed his own ideas.

Olivia pulled back a little and tilted her head to one side, a sultry fire burning behind her eyes. She pulled on his shirt and lowered both of them to the ground; the stones dry despite the stables decay. Olivia pulled on of Erik's hands to the buttons on her dress, her fingers popping the buttons from their holdings and he pulling the fabric apart, stroking the skin that lay underneath until all of her clothes lay underneath her and she was clad only in her corset and white stockings.

Erik looked at her pale, wide, the fading bruises of her faceless abusers and patrons once again bared to him. He touched a large one shaped like a palm on the handle of her hip, barely stroking it as if he was going to hurt her if otherwise. He knelt down and kissed the bruise as if he was attempting to draw out the pain and heartache given when it was put on her. He did this to all the bruises on her body while Olivia silently looked on, running a hand over his face every now and again.

Erik wrapped his fingers around the front of the stiff body of the corset where a small part of her cleavage showed and pulled her up so that her back was off the ground. With her body pressed to his chest and her chin on his left shoulder he smoothly unlaced the corset strings, peeling away the cloth and bone from her body. She sighed softly as she was released and tilted her head slightly towards his ear. "Your overdressed," she whispered huskily.

Erik dropped her back onto the floor, completely nude save for the cream colored stockings that stopped below her knee. Erik's chest was heaving as he dropped back over her, his body cradled in her hips fighting with himself and his desires long repressed. He tore his cravat from his neck and violently tossed it away as he struggled to breathe his hair dripping into his face, his eyes becoming more wild with every second even as the gentleman viciously restrained the animal.

Olivia purred and rose up to him kissing and nipping at his Adams apple as she undid the fastenings on his suit coat and shirt. Erik groaned deeply, his head falling backwards to expose his neck more to her ministrations, eyes closed as he slipped his loose clothes from his body.

Erik knelt down to her and in that motion he pushed his pants off of him and kicked them away. When they touched, her naked body gyrating against him the man gave a jerk on the animal's chain as he struggled to maintain control. Erik trembled in her arms as he fought his opposing wills in his head. Olivia took his chin and guided his lips to hers before her mouth drifted over to his ear. "You won't hurt me. I have endured far worse than what you could do."

Erik pulled up his head, his eyes full of care and pity. He touched the tip of his nose to hers and shook his head. "Never again," he promised her.

And he thrust into her.

Erik gasped at the sensation, his fingers curling into tight fists as he clung to her, deprived of speech, devoid of thought, lost hopelessly in feeling. The heat of her dark depths he was rhythmically rocking in, the sleek sweat on her legs wrapped around his hips, the soft breathing of her mouth attached to his. He stiffened as he felt the hinges of his sanity loosen and he arched up, he hands braced against the wall. With he grunt and a soft cry he came, he clinging to the wall, she wrapped around his neck.

"Yes," she breathed.

Olivia in a burst of energy rose up, pushing Erik forcefully in the center of his chest until Erik was on the ground and Olivia straddled above him. He lay there as Olivia bounced up and down, impaling herself upon him, taking what was always taken from her. Erik watched as he breasts moved with her. He reached up and took one in each hand, weighing them in his palms, massaging them with his fingers, feeling the pebble of the tip brushing against the skin.

Olivia looked down at him her eyes wide, the darkness even blacker her raven hair hanging over her shoulders. With one hand she reached for his mask. Erik jerked his head away reflexively, not wanting to ruin this for her, but Olivia was insistent. "I want to see you," she pleaded breathily. Erik looked at her, gauging every reaction as she peeled his protection from him. His body stiffened.

Olivia sighed in satisfaction leaning up to toss it to the side. Then she fell forward her forearms running over his face while her fingers raked his hair. She kissed his face, both the perfect side and the ruined side, every inch before finally settling on his mouth his head still trapped in her arms. Erik hoped, amidst her worshipping, she did not notice the tears leaking from his golden eyes.

Olivia stiffened and keened as she came, Erik absorbing all the tremors into his body until she fell limp on his chest.

Erik pushed her to his side, her back to his front and he took her again, both languid, both relaxed, both tender, both reverent until both sets of spasms ceased. Olivia tucked herself into his shoulder her fingers running over his chest, both listening to the sound of the other's breathing. Olivia stretched her neck to reach his ear. She kissed at it lightly. "I love you," she whispered.

Erik had never believed that a woman would say that to him, even less that it would be given before he gave it to her. He turned to her and lay his hand on her cheek and she lay her hand on his.

"And I love you."


	9. The Annoyances Of Newspapers

Chapter Nine: The Annoyances Of Newspapers

Erik lay in what was Christine's bed—now their bed, and stared up at the dark ceiling, his head resting against his arm, Olivia's head resting on his chest. Erik sighed in the silence, hearing the wispy sounds create echoes in the cavernous halls.

"What are you thinking about?" Erik looked down to see Olivia staring up at him.

"Nothing," he said quietly, still staring up at the ceiling, running a thumb across her temple. But Erik could still sense her eyes still on him, patiently waiting, knowing that nothing was the farthest from the truth.

He waved his hand around the room. "No one should live like this," he said softly.

"Yes," said Olivia. The pause in the conversation told Olivia there was more to Erik's meaning then what she was understanding. Erik twisted his head so that he could look at her.

"You mean me," she said softly.

Erik nodded. He rested his cheek on the top of her head and gathered her into his arms. "I can't lose you," he said, "but I don't see how I can keep you."

"Erik," she said, "you have the finances to support us."

"For now. But what happens when the money runs out, I have no way to gain it back."

Neither one spoke for a while, each pondering the situation until Olivia shot up in bed as an epiphany struck her. "Erik," she said excitedly, "the Opera!"

Erik's eyes widened at the unforeseen opportunity. "Oh no, Olivia, no."

"Erik you have always said you have wanted to run this Opera House."

"Olivia, even with my funds now, buying, rebuilding the House would be enormous."

"Buying is not an issue and you know it. The city will sell it for a fraction of what it's worth.

Erik leaned back against the headboard, silent in his pondering. Olivia leaned against him. "Please Erik. After all these years you deserve this. I want this for you."

Erik was silent for a moment. "Profits could replace what we needed for rebuilding within a year," he paused, "and I would finally be able to cast appropriately." A small grin played with the corner of his mouth.

"Erik," said Olivia, "you do realize this will be very…public."

"Darling, you don't know me at all then. The Phantom of the Opera loves the limelight.

Two weeks later the Epogue published in the front page in large black lettering that the Opera Populaire had been sold from the city into the hands of a wealthy music enthusiast named Erik Angele and his fiancé and business partner Olivia de Briar.

The newspaper came to the doorstep of the Chateau de Changy where it came into Christine's shaking hands. "Raoul," she said weakly handing him the newspaper before folding up into her chair.

Raoul read the print silently pausing abruptly at the word fiancé. "I thought he was gone." Christine looked up at him. "Who is this woman?"

"I don't know," said Raoul flipping to the picture of Olivia de Briar dominating the next page. "There is an opening night gala," said Raoul his eyes scanning the page. "We will go and get this all settled." He paused. "We will meet again my dear phantom," he whispered.

Christine nodded as Raoul folded the paper shut after glancing one last time at the picture. A picture that stayed with the story of the world famous opera house re-opening as it spread all around the world.

A man sat in a hotel room in St. Petersburg for the winter looking at a small caption. But the words meant nothing to him, only the business opportunity that presented itself with the picture. His long fingernails stroked her unchanged face. The man stood up and strode to the door, his boots beating out a slow steady rhythm against the wood. He opened the door a crack. "Georg," he said in a bass voice, "make arrangements for passage to Paris. I have business there.

"Yes Barum," said another deep voice before he closed the door.

The Gypsy Baron looked at the photograph one more time before slipping it into his pocket, an off white grin blooming across his face. "We will meet again my dear Black-Briar Rose."

* * *

Everybody say cliffhanger!


	10. The Grudges Of Women

Chapter Ten: The Grudges Of Women

The August heat came, and with it the fiery gossip of the blossoming Opera house blooming in the center of their city as well as its new owners and the scandals that surrounded an unmarried man and woman living and working together. Glorious. So on the morning when seats were first being sold for the debut piece staged at the House and by extension an invitation for the gala following the sun had not yet reached its highest point in the sky when the house became full with a river of people stilled lined form the grand entryway of the recently renamed House: The Phoenix.

"It's a wonderful name," said Olivia, sitting on the edge of their bed while Erik played with bits and pieces of his new piece meant for opening night on his organ, "it suits her."

"Quite," Erik agreed pausing in his playing to edit a bit of the score, "fitting since its predecessor perished in flames."

"It is fitting for you as well," she responded, "To be born again, young and alive."

Erik turned on his bench and looked at his love. "So it is." He stood and opened his arms so that Olivia could be embraced by them. Olivia rested her cheek on his chest out of the corner of her eye looking at the uneven ceiling of the house, seeing past it to all that lay above. "It is so wonderful. After all these months, after all the hard work you did."

Erik turned her chin with the tips of his gloveless fingers so that her face stared at his. "We did, my dear." He lightly kissed her lips.

Olivia nestled into his chest while Erik laid his chin on the crown of her head, his neck inclined to look at the ceiling as she did, he too seeing past it but not wallowing in the grandeur that they had created with almost every cent they had. Olivia felt his body stiffen and still and she looked at the chiseled lines on his visible face, his golden eyes hard as the metal itself.

"Your nervous," she stated.

Her words prompted Erik to breathe again, drawing him out of his nightmares of horror and heartache. "A beaten dog, however healed, is still wary of the hand that harmed them.

Olivia stroked the outline of his waistcoat, her nail running over the fine burgundy silk. "I understand," she said, "but you need not worry. I would put a bullet through the hand before it touched you.

Erik laughed at the thought. "Truly you are a rose with thorns."

"And truly you should not worry," said Olivia, "this night, Erik, will be unforgettable.

The eagerly awaited for night came to The Phoenix fast, and the separate scenes happened in three separate places at exactly the same time.

Christine leaned up against the thick glass of a front window at the Chateau de Changy, her mind far away in her own memories of opening nights behind the curtains. Absolutely nothing had changed about the event, including the mysterious man who presided over it all. Even the part of besotted young girl was played, only their had been a cast change. The fact that Erik was alive and apparently better than ever had not consume Christine's mind the most, but that there was another that was vying for a place at his side, a place never in her wildest dreams she imagined taken. She was not jealous, but protective of this woman. Erik she knew the man that she loved, or she had been made to believe she loved. Armed with this certainty she turned to her husband who waited at the door and together they went out into the night. Christine chose to ignore the gun she felt weighing down his pocket.

Erik slowly slipped on the cream colored mask that covered a quarter of his face, adjusting to fit the contours of his uneven countenance. He looked at the mirror and for once in a very long time did no shudder at the sight of himself but rather brushed a stray lock of hair away from his face. Olivia was getting dressed in what used to be her old room for it still had her dressing table and wardrobe inside of it. Erik walked across the main room of his house and pulled the trigger that released the hidden door to the room. Erik leaned against the door in relative awe at the dark and beautiful creature that dwelled within it a black strapless dress pooled to her feet her arms wrapped in tight black gloves. She sat on the chair in front of her mirror pinching color into her cheeks.

Erik stepped forward and rested his hands on her bare shoulders, causing her to start slightly. "No," said Erik, "stay exactly as you are." Erik wrapped her dark hair in his fist with one hand and with another he produced a red rose tied with a black ribbon and brought it around in front of her face. Slowly he took it back and used the ribbon to tie the rose into her tresses. Erik's left hand was at the juncture of her neck and shoulder turning her head up and to the right so the could both admire the flower, his right hand rested her shoulder. Olivia reached up and took is hand on her shoulder and gave it a light, reassuring squeeze, and sat silent for another moment in each other's company.

Barum simply walked the streets towards the opera house where his prizes waited chuckling deep in his throat.

Erik and Olivia arrived at Box Five reserved especially for them and watched the crowds flow in like the tide. Olivia looked over at Erik who was having trouble suppressing the grin of child like delight that was on his face. Olivia chuckled endearingly and kissed the top of his hand before the lights dimmed and the curtain rose for the first time in The Phoenix.

The one joy that Erik publicly allowed himself to have about the reconstruction of The Phoenix was that now and forever he would never again have to wince or tune out a singer because they, in his opinion, were not suited for the part. Erik relished this newfound power coupled with his new piece. It was called The Twelve Puppet Masters and it was about the battle of Troy as seen through the twelve Olympian gods making man stupid and immortals shallow. It was a comedy, it was a political satire, and it was brilliant, spellbinding the audience to the stage.

A fact that made it very noticeable when one was not. Erik, while duet banter was being sung between the characters of Aphrodite and Ares, looked about his theatre and saw a face turned towards the row of boxes. But not just a box, his box. And that face was not just a face, but her face.

Erik gasped loudly, falling back into his seat causing Olivia to divert her attention for the stage. "What is it?" she whispered but Erik didn't answer her, determinedly looking at the stage and not where he was looking.

Olivia followed what used to be his line of vision and she too saw the oh so familiar face. Olivia made no sound. Her eyes narrowed and her body tensed ignoring the show completely as she stared at Christine and Christine stared at Erik and Erik not staring at either of them until the irony of the climax gained thunderous applause and the standing ovation blocked everyone's vision.

The house exited to wait in the main hall for the gala to begin. Only two people remained in their seats in order to make the appropriate entrance to their party. They watched the woman that had captured their attention for the evening leaving for their husband not evening bothering to avert their gaze every time she glanced over her shoulder.

Olivia looked at Erik whose eyes were not looking at anything but the memories of what his eyes had seen. Olivia rested her hand on his upper arm. "Why did she come?" he asked her and himself.

"I don't know," responded Olivia, "to vex us I suppose."

Erik caught the note in her voice and looked over at Olivia's face to see that she had a much stronger reaction to Christine being present on their night than he was. His muscles relaxed at the thought and he tilted her head and kissed her hair before standing up and leaving the box, Olivia in tow.

Olivia walked down one of the two staircases in the grand hall leaving Erik up at the top so that she could introduce him as the composer. Her eyes scanned the crowds with grim satisfaction that the people who once scorned him would be welcoming him with triumphant fanfare, except perhaps one or two. Olivia eyes settled on the ex diva and her husband, the only two watching her as she descended, the others idly chatting around them. She stopped about three fourths down the stairs so that she could see everyone and they could see her.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," she said. The crowd did not seem to here her so she tried again more loudly. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I am Olivia de Briar. Welcome to my opera house." This got everyone's attention and in a great wave all heads turned rapidly in her direction to get a glimpse of one half of the duo with her olive skin plunging neckline and wild raven hair tied up with a rose as she spoke with a voice not bearing a French accent at all. "I sincerely hope you enjoyed the show in our beautiful theatre. But, I cannot take all the credit for myself. I give to you my partner my fiancée and the composer, Erik Angele.

Christine new there was applause going on around her but she did hear any of it. She watched with wide and wondering eyes as her Angel of Music descended the stairs with as much majesty and mystique as he did not so long ago when she still held all his heartstrings in her hand, no unlike the woman than now took his arm and looked directly at her with a sort of smugness on her face.

Erik Angele raised his gloved hand and the orchestra began playing and the pair was soon engulfed in the congratulatory crowd. The evening continued without either couple crossing paths until members of the aristocracy were literally dragging Raoul and his wife over the meet the managers.

"Monsieur Angele, Mademoiselle de Briar; this is the Viconte and Vicontess de Changy.

The men slowly reached out their hands. "Raoul," said Erik through unmoving lips.

"Phantom," said Raoul equally as unseen. Olivia noticed that Raoul in the handshake was seemingly trying to crush Erik's fingers she looked up Erik to see him smirking slightly at the effort. Olivia then felt a slender arm slink around her waist and gently tug her away from the men.

"Come," said Christine, whose face was at her ear. "Let us chat, you and I."

Christine and Olivia walked heir arms wrapped around each other's elbows like they were high class friends and the walked with relative coolness both to others and to themselves until they were a little ways away from the gathering.

"You companion is quite dashing," said Christine once they were by themselves. "But I must wonder what he hides under that mask."

Olivia turned sharply on her heel and laced her fingers together and pressed them to her middle almost as if she were restraining herself. "You, Madam," she said pointedly, "of all people should know." And like the shattering of glass, the chivalrous charade ended.

"I know him," said Christine in a beseeching tone, "what he is like."

"No you don't. If you did, I would not be at his side this night." And thus was the statement of why Olivia held such a grudge on Christine. Christine bringing Erik down to how she found him was an unforgivable fault.

"How are you certain this is not just some fantasy he has ensnared you in?"

Olivia laughed. But it was a sarcastic, cold, accusatory laugh. "You doubt me?" she said in a slightly raised tone. "You doubt, that I could love such a man?"

"Love?" said a voice. Not the high voice of Christine, but a low voice leaning down to her shoulder. "Love?"

Olivia felt the air catch in her lungs as she slowly turned around to face the broad barrel chest and yellow grin. "My dear Black-Briar," he said, "you know the rule. You aren't allowed to love.

Olivia turned around "Er—!" but a strong hand silenced her as Barum drug the two off into the shadows.


	11. Of Allies And Enemies

Chapter Eleven: Of Allies And Enemies

The gala was drawing to a close and Erik was at the door giving his farewells. Erik looked around every couple of minutes for Olivia but believed she was elsewhere occupied with other guests. Raoul was the last man in the line and when it came to him he did not shake hands or make a move closer to the front doors than he already was. Raoul's face showed that his blood was boiling just underneath the skin as he hissed at his old foe through clenched teeth. "Where is she?"

Erik raised an eyebrow, "Where is who, pray tell?"

Something inside the young Viconte snapped at that moment and he curled his fist and swung it as the covered side of the Phantom's face.

Erik turned his head with the blow so that Raoul's knuckles barely touched the cream colored material. Erik grabbed the wrist attached to the fist and brought it round Raoul's back and pulled it upward sharply. "Careful, boy," Erik whispered in his ear. "I still don't like you that much."

"You dragged Christine down to that hellhole again," said Raoul, "admit it!"

Erik released Raoul's arm and turned the sandy haired man around. "Christine? Of course not; Olivia would be eternally vexed with me." Erik noted with some smug satisfaction in the back of his mind that he just admitted to Raoul that a woman would be vexed at an action of his involving another woman. He watched Raoul grapple with that for a moment before he spoke again with the same tone of mistrust and anger.

"If she is not with you then where else would she be?" he demanded.

Erik opened his mouth to speak again but was almost immediately interrupted.

"Monsieur Angele." The two men turned their heads and saw an elderly woman who had attended the opera walking over to the pair of them. "Monsieur Angele. Would you be so kind as to point me in the direction of Mademoiselle de Briar? I simply must invite her to my Sunday luncheon at my salon.

Erik looked at her with a question brooding behind his gaze. Mademoiselle de Briar is not here?" he asked.

"No Monsieur," said the woman, "I have searched this whole hall over, but she has gone off and vanished."

"Madam," this time it was Raoul speaking. "Did you by any chance happen to see the Vicontess de Changy?"

The woman turned her gaze towards Raoul. "No Monsieur le Viconte." She smiled at the two men. "Perhaps they are together."

Erik nodded stiffly then strung on a cordial smile as he steadily lead the woman to the front doors where not doubt a carriage waited for her promising and re-promising that he would pass on her generous invitation to his fiancée. Erik's keen eyesight caught a dark shape in the corner of the cobblestoned square and the golden orbs contracted in fear as his breath was punched from his lungs. Erik left the woman in the care of Raoul who in turn had to promise to convey her invitation to his own wife as he put her in the carriage, all the while watching his old foe out of the corner of his eye numbly drift over to what his eyes were incapable of seeing.

Raoul walked away from the rumbling of carriage wheels towards the eerie silence that tickled the hairs on his neck. As he got closer he saw the shadow of Erik's form, porcelain mask bent low into an unseen chest slowly shaking it back and forth. His gloved hands were gripping thick, iron, bars; bars of a cage that he knew quite well.

"No," rasped a voice that Raoul would have never believed could have come from the man. Erik in fear was much more frightening then Erik fearsome. "God, no." Raoul believed that if Erik were not clutching the bars he would have crumpled to the ground.

After a beat Erik gained the strength of a desperate man and was running back to the doors of the opera house running over the floor plan in his head from the roof to the deepest cellars. Erik in the outer reaches of his senses heard the sharp slapping of the Viconte's shoes behind him.

"Erik, what has happened?"

"Barum is here."

"Who?"

"Claudius Barum; the gypsy master of Olivia and myself when we were children. He has found us."

Erik turned around once they were both inside and bolted the door shut, locking it securely with a key in his coat pocket.

"And you think that this man has taken both Olivia and Christine?"

Erik slowly, almost reluctantly turned to him, as if revealing this information would make it all the more real, all the more terrifying. But the memories of his childhood would not let him skive. "Raoul," he said softly, "pray with every fiber of your being that he hasn't."

Olivia and Christine sat up against the wall of the empty stone room the only exit blocked by a thick wooden door. Christine was looking about the room her neck snapping to and fro looking for some way of escape. Olivia had her knees tucked into her chest, her wide eyes staring at her knees, knowing that there was none.

Christine looked at Olivia. "Where are we," she whispered.

Olivia shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know." Christine looked at the angle of Olivia's face that she could see and saw that fear clouded all her reason, or perhaps the knowledge of who this man was.

"Who is this man?" asked Christine in a hushed tone.

"His name is Barum," answered Olivia almost with no emotion. "He was my master—"

"Is you master, Black-Briar."

Both the women's heads shot up at the sound of their captor's voice ass Barum closed the door behind him. His face bore a smirk as he approached Olivia who was cloaking her fear with defiance. "I have come for my freak and my whore, Black-Briar," not even bothering with false, self-glorying cordials, coming straight to the point of why they were entombed in his make shift cell. "I have one, now where is the other?" Barum grabbed Olivia's arm and wrenched her up, backing her against the stone wall. "The Devil's Child, Black-Briar, surrender him to me."

Christine gasped. It was Erik they spoke of. But neither acknowledged her sound, or even her presence in the room. To each only the other existed.

Olivia looked him square in the eye, something that Christine was not sure she could do. "No," she stated bluntly.

Barum backhanded Olivia so hard is bent her body in half her head down at her hips. But the Gypsy Baron with the same hand that struck her caught her before she collapsed to the floor, ensnaring her raven hair in his olive colored hands and wrenched her head back up to his. "I will kill him when I find him if you don't give him to me."

"You won't kill him," Olivia sneered through wheezing. "I know you. You won't kill your biggest profit. He made more than all of us put together. You can't do anything to him."

Barum seemed to ponder this, his hands seemingly tied by her reasoning and his own greed, but it was only for a moment before the smirk returned and he looked back into his prisoner's eyes again. "True," he chuckled, a dark, sadistic, laugh, "but that defense does not shield you from what I will do to _you_ to have him."

Olivia's dark eyes widened and Barum raised and hand and stroked her cheek a purple bruise already darkening her jaw. "You haven't changed at all, Black-Briar, except…" His hand dropped lower, as if he was examining the curves of her body. "He has fed you well I see. Good, you're going to need her strength." Barum's hand clenched around her breast. Olivia gasped and tossed her head back looking at the ceiling.

Christine saw Olivia's choice just as plainly as Olivia did. Give up her Erik to this man, or give up her body. Christine could not be silent any longer. "Tell him where he is! He will be fine! If you know him as well as you say you do you know he can take care of himself!"

Olivia slowly twisted her head to look over her captor's shoulder to look at her fellow prisoner. Christine could not name the emotion that Olivia looked at her with but it was laced with anger and disappointment. She addressed them both with one word. "No."

Taking that as her answer the Gypsy Baron scooped Olivia up into his chest and man-handled Olivia out the door, one hand closing it behind him, the other wrapped in a vice around her struggling form.

Christine did not her any sounds, or perhaps she forcefully blocked them from her mind as she sat there pondering Olivia's actions as well as her statement to herself. Did she say no because Erik was incapable of looking after himself? No, she reasoned. Then innate wisdom seemed to strike the Vicontess. She said no because if she said yes her betrayal would hurt Erik more than what Barum could do to him. Break him, far more completely than she ever could. Christine asked herself why. Because they suffered together in childhood, parted and reunited, making each other feel more human than all of humanity had ever bestowed upon them. Christine also realized that the reason why she could give Erik up so easily was because she did not love him…"

The sound of the door opening again pulled Christine out of her thoughts and she watched as the limp form of Olivia was tossed in the room crumpling to the floor in front of Christine. Christine saw cuts of her face and neck, her dress torn practically off of her, her legs decorated with hand shaped bruises given by the hand that brutally parted them.

"You have grown soft," Barum called through the door. "Please me better next time or I'll break you harder." And he slammed the door shut.

Slowly Christine inched her way over to Olivia sitting down silently next to her no words needing to be said. She tore a piece of fabric from her own dress and began cleaning the blood from Olivia. She looked into her glazed eyes and saw to her shock how her body and mind were prepping for the second of a possibly unending onslaught.

She knew then, without a doubt, that Erik had found a woman that loved him as much as he did her, now transferred and magnified to the woman that lay prostrate at her feet.

To the point of no return.

* * *

There was no opening in which I could put this into the story so I thought I would clarify here. The room Christine and Olivia are in is the room that we first see Erik in or rather the top of his head in the Phantom of the Opera while Christine is singing think of me. This is mildly important later so I thought I would elaborate since there is no way of knowing where they were taken. Also the two scenes are happening at the same time scene two maybe slightly earlier then scene one, just so you know. Not that many chapters left, enjoy them while you can while I enjoy the reviews you give them.


	12. The Burning Of The Past

Chapter Twelve: The Burning Of The Past

Erik was walking into the audience area of where he his theatre, now a prison his love was entrapped in somewhere…anywhere. He scanned the floors all the doors and the labyrinth of hallways and secret passages that people have managed to stumble upon before. He golden gaze turned upward towards the catwalks and flies above that stage scaling ever higher until they were lost in the shadows. And there was also another factor now. The Phoenix was built on the bones of the Populaire; there could be secret pockets of debris sturdy enough to hide someone that even he did not know about. And there were exits from such places, many places. Olivia and Christine could have already been smuggled away and she was lost to him forever.

"No," he mentally argued with himself. Barum had Olivia; she was the key to him. And Barum would not leave with just one. Still, with that aside, his small corner of the world suddenly seemed very large.

"Erik!" He turned sharply, firstly out of his own agitation, and secondly in shock because Raoul had addressed him by his Christian name. The Viconte swiftly approached him with a lit torch ready to descend into the bowels of the opera again, yet his face was not as it was the first time he had done so. He stopped in front of him.

"Erik," he said, "we need help. We need to get someone here. The police, anybody."

Erik clenched his teeth. "That would take too long to organize, and they do not know this place like I do. Barum could play cat and mouse with them for hours while I looked elsewhere because I foolishly believed in their competence."

Raoul slowly shook his head. "You are just one man. As skilled as you are in this realm of yours, your just one man. Barum can evade you as easily as he can evade ten because you cannot be in ten places at once."

"I know!" Erik yelled in his desperation and despair.

"Then what do you suggest we do?" said Raoul in an equally as fierce tone.

Erik didn't speak as he thought, seething, his eyes darting around the shadowy theatre bathed in a dark glow from Raoul's torch.

The torch.

Erik suddenly became very still, as if him mind was coming to grips with what it had mentally suggested, and accepted it.

"Burn it."

"What?!" said Raoul.

Erik snatched the torch from Raoul's slackened grip and began walking up towards the stage. He looked like the demented demon that Raoul had known in this moment. "He wants to hide? Well, soon there will be no place left to hide." Erik turned towards Raoul as he stood in the center of the stage. "We will smoke him out, straight to us." He added in a softer voice Raoul could not here. "To me." He seized the thick curtains and set them ablaze.

Christine sat in her cell with her back braced up against the wall farthest away from the door. In her lap rested Olivia's head as she drifted in and out of consciousness due to her injuries. Her hand sometime smoothed the injured girl's hair away from her face from time to time. Christine's nose flared and she looked around rapidly. "Something's burning," she whispered.

Olivia weakly rolled her head so that it was faced towards the ceiling. She saw through the slivers in the stone above their heads a thin but steady stream of smoke snaking its way into the room. Her eyes widened slightly. "Erik, what have you done?"

The door violently rattled on its hinges until it was flung open banging against the wall. Barum came stumbling in a plume of thick dark smoke. He stormed violently into the room and seized Christine's forearm. "Get up," he snarled, "Your husband and that blasted boy are burning the place to the ground."

He pulled Christine up but Olivia fell out of her lap he did so and slumped to the floor. "She's to hurt to walk!" said Christine before Barum could do anything to make her stand.

The Gypsy Baron hissed and seized her around the waist and half flung her over his shoulder while he grabbed the Vicontess once again and pulled the pair of the from the room.

He lead them through the tunnels he had discovered on his own as Christine watched them slowly fill with smoke as the fire came ever closer to where they were. The smoke filled their lungs and stung their eyes in their escape towards possible rescue. Barum opened the doors and they were in the stables, two horses running out though the open doors. She knew what lay beyond the doors of the stables: a bridge crossing the river, and then the vastness of the city of Paris. Suddenly she looked at one of the horses as it ran through the doors, she knew it. "Caesar," she whispered. And she was pulled out behind it.

Christine once she exited the Opera House looked over her shoulder to see it. Fire licked at the very top of it now, and the delicate glass was bursting from the windows. But she did not have time to stare at its tragic beauty for long for she was yanked by her captor towards the bridge. They were about halfway across when the violent crack of gunfire cut across the night. Christine turned her head and saw her husband at the base of the bridge his pistol clutched in both hands aiming it at them. Christine screamed and began to struggle both to get to her husband and to draw his fire away from her injured friend.

Barum turned at the shot and struggling and saw the Viconte. He could hardly move with Christine trying to get away from him so with a twist of his wrist he released her and she ran to her husband, captured quickly in his arms. But as he released her Olivia face was turned towards his back. He heard her speak softly through her heavy breathing.

"Erik…"

Erik seized the childhood tormentor by the back of his neck forcing him to drop Olivia and he slammed him up against the low wall of the bridge. His golden eyes glared at the Gypsy Baron's face. Barum looked at him as well shock and awe blending together on his face. "You are not the Devil's Child," he said in a low voice, one that showed respect, and resignation.

Erik growled his dark savage nature of several years ago coming to the surface. Slowly, deliberately, he leaned towards Barum's ear. "He grew up."

In one motion The Phantom of the Opera did two things; he looped his noose around Barum's neck and pushed him in the center of his chest so that he fell over the wall of the bridge. Erik put his boot up against the wall as the rope went tight, the coarse rope drawing blood from his hands, but Erik didn't care, for a moment, he seemed to enjoy it. He held his end of the Punjab lasso until the other end went still. He let the rope slide through his hands, out of it, hearing the single splash below him.

Erik with no emotion on his face walked over to Olivia who had lost consciousness and gently picked her up covering her with the folds of his cloak and resting her raven-haired head his chest. He did not glance back at Christine and Raoul or at the burning Phoenix. Without a word he walked away with Olivia in his arms, away from Christine, away from the Opera, away from everything he once thought he cared about.

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One more chapter everyone. YAY!!!


	13. Of Blank Pages

Chapter Thirteen: Of Blank Pages

Olivia peeled away the haze of her sleep to find herself resting in the warm folds of a bed, the thick covers tucked up to her chin. This was not she and Erik's bed. She looked around. This was not a room she knew either. The presence of light showed the wooden walls of the small room supplied with only the essentials of a room. The only thing that was familiar to her was the dark outline of her lover standing by the window looking out passively onto the bustling city streets below him. Olivia wrestled her arm out from beneath the layers and reached out to his back. "Darling," she called softly.

Erik spun on his heel and the step was halfway across the room. He knelt down at her side and ran a gloveless hand across her forehead. She leaned into the texture of his touch, gentle yet powerful. Her hand encircled his wrist and kept it close to her. "What happened?"

Erik looked up at the wall behind Olivia's head. "I set the Phoenix on fire to smoke Barum out. He came out the entrance just after I had set Caesar and Shakespeare loose. I had gone ahead to block off the bridge and to watch the backside of the opera while was beginning to journey to the front. I saw the three of you exit and Raoul saw soon after. All I had to do was wait."

Olivia looked up at Erik the masked half of his face facing her so she could not gage his emotions. "Is the Vicontess safe?" she asked.

Erik nodded, "Christine is safe in the arms of her husband. Raoul fired at Barum and he turned her lose before I got to you." He paused. "I killed him."

Olivia let out a long breath before shifting slightly towards him. "Good."

Olivia winced at the movement she made and Erik turned his full face towards her. "What's wrong?" he demanded gently.

Olivia shook her head. "Nothing. It's fine. I'm just…sore."

Erik winced at her pain and also at his own failure. He rested a hand lightly upon her abdomen and turned his face away form Olivia again. "I promised that no would hurt you again. What you must think of me now."

Olivia tilted her head to one side her eyes softening. She pushed herself up so that she was leaning against the headboard, releasing his wrist to grasp his chin. She turned his face toward her. "What I thought was that I knew you would come for me and make me safe again."

Olivia leaned in and kissed him gently, as if she treasured being able to do such an act. Erik slowly wrapped his arms around the small of her back and held her for a long time.

The sun was setting and Erik and Olivia were on their mounts at the edge of the city of Paris. For the first time they both looked back. "With the Phoenix burned," said Erik, "our life, our future here is gone, and we can take nothing from it."

"Where will we go?" asked Olivia.

Erik turned his horse around towards the road that lead to the rest of their lives, together. "This is a new beginning. I thought it would be nice to return to our beginning.

Olivia turned her horse around stopping at his side. She looked at the road as well. "To Budapest?" she asked looking at him.

He nodded. "To Budapest."

Finis

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Well there you have it. Hope you enjoyed it. I will publish a one chapter epilogue so be on the lookout for that. Reviews are still wanted. AND for your future reading pleasure I give you The Amnesia Years, an Underworld based story that already had a few chapters on it. Im sorry this took so long but you know sometimes that happens. Thank you to everyone who reviewd and stuck with the story. Peace!!


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